


The Telling #54

by Basic_instinct40



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Frenemies, Imaginary Friends, Internal Monologue, M/M, One Shot, me connecting the dots between animorphs and fight club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27610625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basic_instinct40/pseuds/Basic_instinct40
Summary: I’m observing a giant bird feasting on a headless mouse from the vantage position of my bedroom window sill as Tyler stomps into the room and leans against the dresser. I mumble, “Look, at that thing’s wingspan,” As if I’m narrating a show on an animal planet.
Relationships: Tyler Durden/Narrator
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	The Telling #54

**Author's Note:**

> This is me drawing parallels between Animorphs and Fight Club. 
> 
> Tobias/Rachel = The Narrator/Tyler Durden
> 
> Something to do with me trying to understand myself and my love of relationships where a person has been dehumanized or had their personhood stolen/striped and a not quite human who possesses everything wonderful about being a person. 
> 
> "This is why we fight. And to be honest, I like a good fight. The adrenaline spike of battle. The rush. The challenge. And now that I've admitted that, I'll admit something else: Lately, it's been scaring me that I like it. That I look forward to it so much. [...] I can't help myself. It's like I'm addicted or something. Addicted to danger."  
> ―Rachel
> 
> "I have strong feelings for Tobias. The kind you can't help. The kind that seem inevitable. Like they were always there, even before you knew the person."  
> ―Rachel

I haven’t been feeling like myself. Sleep has been scarce lately, and I’m looking forward to tonight’s fight for some much-needed release. I’m working on a way to get Tyler to take a couple of jabs at me, give me that same high from when we fought under a bright singular star. I need his hot fist on my cold jaw, making the air taste metallic and too real. I’ve been in dozens of fights since our rebirth. I’ve been made and unmade by every wimpy fist of every blue-collared Joe and Jack that’s had the privilege of hearing the rules of fight club. But I haven’t been that degree of fucked up since Tyler pounded his way inside of me. 

Nobody messes me up the way Tyler does. Nobody can fuck me up quite as good. 

I’m observing a giant bird feasting on a headless mouse from the vantage position of my bedroom window sill as Tyler stomps into the room and leans against the dresser. I mumble, “Look, at that thing’s wingspan,” As if I’m narrating a show on an animal planet. “It’s gotta be 3, maybe 5 feet long.” I don’t look to see if this impresses Tyler. We both know it doesn’t. I shift my attention from the predator in the trees and surrender it to the predator in my bedroom.

Tyler is wearing an amused smile of sorts. My dick flutters with curiosity at the notion that he placed it on for me to view. For me, and only me, to figure out.  
He cocks his head at the winged killer, crouching to inspect it further, and rests his scab-covered knuckles onto his knees. “That’s a red-tailed hawk—one of nature’s perfect hunters.” Tyler glances at me, a flick of an evaluation. “You’ve never hunted a day in your life,” he states. I don’t reply because he already knows. This is how conversations work between us. 

He rises and stalks towards me. My lungs breathe in one shaky, shallow wisp of oxygen before plunging into my belly. I wonder if this is how the mouse felt. Unsure of its place in the process of kill or be killed up until the point the Hawk scooped it away and stole its life. Can something be stolen if it’s given away? Is the Hawk stealing if by its very nature it has to feed off the weak? 

“You still with me?” A rough patch of leather hand scraps down the side of my face. I tell Tyler that I’m still with him. 

“You haven’t been sleeping.” Again, Tyler doesn’t ask, he tells me and I nod along with his report. His hand disappears too soon, and I turn to face the window. The tree is vacant. The hawk has flown elsewhere. 

“I don’t feel like myself,” I say. I want to be the one who gives information to Tyler. I want to give him something, but I don’t own anything. He chuckles and lights a cigarette, sucking down its toxins and my bullshit. Tyler lounges on my uneven bed for one, balancing his lithe body upon his weaponized elbows. I stare down at my kiss, scared fist instead of him. 

“Let me ask you something?” Tyler mouths around the cigarette. “If you aren’t yourself, then who the fuck are you?” 

I shrug haphazardly just to give my hunched in flesh sack something to do. I clench both fists, one glycerin kissed, and the other, it throbs fearsomely with the idea of punching Tyler’s ribs and clavicle. The truth is, I’ve never hit him as hard as I could. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t fight me anymore. 

Tyler holds the half-finish cigarette out to me, and I take it. “Maybe you should stay in tonight. Take it easy. Rest.” I draw the smoke into my hollow chest and witness him speak. My answer is silent and transparent, like the smoke that fills the room. Why didn’t we open the window?

He laughs. “You could open it if you wanted to.” Tyler stretches out on the bed, his button-up shirt rustling up and I catch an eye full of rigid solid muscle. It’s shameful how shameless Tyler makes me. I gather that I’ve spoken aloud, but I can’t figure out if it’s worth addressing. 

I tear my gaze from Tyler’s centerfold spread display and back to the empty tree. “I wonder if it will come back. The bird. The hawk,” I unnecessarily clarify. He knows what I mean. 

“Nope. That creature is free.” Tyler’s palms cup my shoulders, and his muted advance should startle me, but it’s a poisonous comfort that I devour. His grip is a ghostly anchor restraining me here with myself. Making me frighteningly present. I think about the mouse in its final living movements before it commences its next phase in this circle of life we all play a part in. I envision the mouse so clearly. Its belly ripped beneath the sharp blue blanket of the sky. How oddly intimate it must be to lay dying in the clutches of your hunter and know that they’ll be with you until the end. 

“I haven’t been feeling like myself.” I can’t tell if I say this aloud or not. It doesn’t matter. Not between us. 

Tyler answers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to anyone who had to hear my rambles on this subject and to the 3 people who might read this.


End file.
